Posts Tagged ‘wonderland’

We’ve seen the fabulous work of Judith and her daughter Freeke before, most notably on our facebook page, but when she sent us these images of two out-of-this-world Alice costumes, we knew they deserved their very own Featured Project post. After all, we’re always suckers for a new Alice project, and this time we got TWO wonderland wonders for the price of one!

Judith & her daughter are from the Netherlands, so her answers are short and sweet, but the amazing photos of these gorgeous embroidered costumes is more than enough to keep your eyes happy! Read on to learn a little about the ideas behind each Wonderland costume and the embroidery she added to them…

What started this project? What were the costumes for?

I started the project because I saw the Wonderland designs on your page. I started searching for a reason to embroider them on something, because I liked the designs a lot! The costumes were for my daughter who was planning on wear them at am upcoming fantasy fair.

What’s the blue Alice costume all about? What designs did you use to make it?

There was a group with who were going to do a photo shoot with, and they were discussing an Alice in Wonderland theme. That’s what started the hunt, and when I found the Wonderland embroidery designs the costume followed.

This blue Alice costume with the rabbit ears on the hat is supposed to have the rabbit “hiding” in it. The rest is a new twist on Alice. My daughter hasn’t gotten a chance to wear it yet at the fantasy fair.

What kinds of challenges did you face in making this costume?

I had quite a bit of trouble making the rabbit hat. It was the first time I made a hat and I didn’t really know what materials to use!

Tell us a little about the other Alice costume…

The costume from this photoshoot was a ‘Black Alice’ theme because we made it around Halloween, but she wore for this photo shoot last Sunday. It ended up being sort of a wintery scene in the summer, because the Black Alice also had a hooded jacket as part of the outfit.

What kinds of designs did you end up using on this costume?

On the apron I used a design of a raven and a chain, because it look a little boring without them. I also used the Blackthorn design pack for the Black Alice coat.

I can’t remember how long it took to embroider them, but they were easy to do. Thankfully, there weren’t many threads I needed to cut.

How are people reacting to the costumes and all the embroidery?

I get a lot of nice replies on the embroidery designs and the costume. People are very enthusiastic about them.

Any other fun project planned for the future?

I’m currently working on a Steampunk Geesekeeper costume for my daughters. I also would like to do a costume with the Dark Fairytales designs. I don’t know what it would be yet, but I think that they could make a very nice costume.

Thank you so much for sharing your amazing sewing skills Judith, and to Freeke for her awesome modeling skills. She makes a perfect Alice! I’m sure these costumes will be a hit the fantasy fair. And I know we’re all just dying to see the next costume you two dream up! I bet Halloween this year will be epic.

Do you want to have your project featured on StitchPunk? Drop us a line at blog@urbanthreads.com or upload your Urban Threads stuff to our flickr group!

Howard Avenue stitched up an awesomely geeky camera strap complete with ctrl alt delete design and matching liner. If you’re going to rock the camera strap in style, geeky embroidery is the way to do it.

I want to know everything about this Alice in Wonderland tea time jacket from strikkeknits, including how can I make one of my own? I bet you’re wondering the same thing.

I’ll see if I can find out.

Adorable is the name of the game for this cute little gift pack fromGiliell.

Finally, there’s a wonderfully touching story to this beautiful Strength pillow from Erica, who made it for her mum on Monther’s Day. Erica says…

“We recently found out that my dad (a leo) has a terminal illness. This embroidery design was perfect for a pillow that would be easy for her to move/carry around to be with her when she needed it.”

Truly inspiring, and an amazing gift. Thanks for sharing Erica.

Thanks to all the crafty folk to share their stitches with us in our Urban Threads flickr pool! It’s such a treat to see all the amazing an inventive ways people are using the designs. Want to see more? Check out all our flickr roundup posts for even more inspiration.

Do you want to see your stuff featured in a roundup? Upload it to our flickr pool or e-mail it to blog@urbanthreads.com, and you could see your stuff on StitchPunk.

Today’s featured project came to us in a fleeting glimpse one day in a flickr roundup, and passed without another mention. That was a terrible shame. This quilt was simply too gorgeous to let by without comment, so we found its creator, Tuesday, and asked her to share a few more details (and exclusive photos!) with us about this wonderful whimsical Wonderland Quilt.

I wonder if there are any more “w” words I’m overlooking here. Wistful? Wise? Wow-inducing?

Now I’m just reaching. I’ll go grab my thesaurus and get back to you. In the meantime, let’s let Tuesday tell us a bit about what went in to this creation…

Talk about what inspired this. What’s the story behind this quilt? How did it get started?

The Alice designs on your site inspired me to make this quilt and transform my bedroom into an Alice in Wonderland theme. I feel that as you are dreaming you are entering through the looking glass into another realm.

What embroidery designs did you use? How did you go about designing it?

I wanted the quilt to be light in color to set off the embroidery designs (which I just love), with the designs in brown and pink and pink satin squares to soften and add visual interest.

I also used other designs from Urban Threads that I thought would go with my overall design. I chose the unicorn emblem and the necklace to add a bit of fun whimsy.

Talk us through the process. How long did it all take?

I made the quilt from white linen on point, which means all the squares are turned to form a diamond pattern for the background. I then began by sitting at my embroidery machine all afternoon (at that time I only had a simple Singer Futura which you had to watch closely in case of any thread breaks) and proceeded to make all the designs for the quilt (around 35 in total) with a few remakes due to thread breakage.

I embroidered the designs on a heavier (same color) lightweight muslin, then cut out all the designs leaving a ragged edge which leaves a nice fray as it is washed. I placed them randomly but aesthetically all over, but thought it still needed more flair, so I came up with adding squares of linen, muslin, and satin at different angles and on top of one another to add a layered effect.

I then used the fancy stitches from my machine to go around all the squares so they look like they were patched on, and made a circular pattern on all the satin squares. It gives them textural interest as well as feeling really cool to the touch! I sewed all the designs down with a simple straight stitch, going around the edges and tacking down in a few key areas so they were left puffy but secure.

I decided to use a brown flannel geometric print for the back which would keep with the whimsical aspect and match, especially since you would be seeing it on the binding on the front of the quilt as well . Then on to the quilting machine it went with a lightweight batting in the middle. I quilted the main body with a random stippling effect and quilted each square following the edges to the center.

I was at the thrift store later when lo and behold I saw someone had taken the fringe off a bedspread and was for sale for 99 cents (what a find!). I thought it was perfect for the Alice quilt. I came home and sewed the fringe on and it was perfect.

I placed the quilt on my bed and thought it just needed a little something, so I made a matching pillow the same way as I had made the quilt, with a larger design of “Drink Me” in the center, and matching fringe as the final touch.

The quilt is layered over a deep purple velvet bedspread which peeks out from around the edge. This quilt has started my bedroom on a wonderful transformation – fun, romantic and with a touch of whimsy. I am a very determined sewer so the quilt only took 2 weeks to make!

Everyone who has seen it just loves it.

Any challenges along the way? What advice would you give someone trying a similar project?

I never see a problem, just a different avenue!

Looking back though, I might have made it a little bigger as it is only full size. The only advice I would give is let your imagination run wild, have fun and if something goes a different direction go with it and make it your own.

What’s your next project going to be?

I have many projects in the works all the time as I am a painter, quilter and designer. Right now I have a Mad Hatter quilt in the works, with the hatter in the center of the quilt (at 3 feet tall) with a gorgeous pieced background and butterflies flitting around him. I also have a dragonfly quilt in the works and many more.

I make quilts for friends and family and also to sell, they are truly a piece of my heart.

What a truly gorgeous creation, Tuesday! A quilt like that in only two weeks, that has to be some sort of record. I love that it feels so perfectly contemporary yet traditional all at the same time, and looks so cozy and textural with all those layers and dimension. The perfect quilt to wrap up in and get lost in a good book I think.

Did you ever stop and think… Gee, how awesome would it be if I could have some fabric that perfectly matched my favorite embroidery series? You can select your answer below.

A) Really awesome

B) Totally awesome

C) Awesomley awesome

D) All of the above

I’d say D, but I’ll give anyone extra credit for C, since you appear to like the word awesome as much as I do. And it is AWESOME!

That’s right, Urban Threads has opened a Spoonflower store where you can buy fabrics to match some of your favorite series! It’s a small selection to start, but we thought we’d offer some of our holiday favorites, including our new Robot Christmas designs, and then expand with your requests.

So, you might ask, what is this Spoonflower and how does it work?

Spoonflower is an online store that makes it possible for individuals to design, print and sell their own fabric designs. What this means for us is that without having to go full on into the textiles business, we can offer you awesome Urban Threads designs on fabric for your crafty needs. Spoonflower will print and ship your fabric directly do you, on demand.

This also means that for ordering purposes, all questions about fabric, shipping or general customer service should be dealt with through the Spoonflower site. You can e-mail us with groovy new fabric design ideas, but if you have a question about how long your order is going to take to get to Tahiti, you’ll need to contact Spoonflower, since we’ll be unable to help you. We just make the designs. Gotcha?

Sweet. Let’s get on to the fabric candy.

The Robot Christmas Collection

We’ve created four collections, each with two fabric designs in it. We couldn’t of course launch this new Spoonflower adventure without kicking it off with our new Robot Christmas embroidery series (on sale for a limited time!)

We are SO excited about this new venture into the fabric world. We hope you guys love it. It’s not all we’re excited about today though, because this weekend we’re giving away a chance for three lucky people to win three yards of Urban Threads fabric each. That’s right, we’ll ship you three yards of our quilting weight fabric, with any designs you like! Pick two yards of one kind, one yard of another, or go crazy with a full three yards of the one you love most. It’s up to you.

How do you enter? Just leave a comment on this post telling us what you might do with this fabric (that can include anything from project ideas to just staring at it happily, as far as we’re concerned) by Monday 11:59am, central time. Three lucky winners will be chosen at random to try out their favorite Urban Threads fabric on us.

What are you waiting for? Leave you comment below to enter! Good luck, and we hope you enjoy browsing our new Spoonflower fabrics. We can’t wait to see what you create with them!

The last warm days of summer are still hanging on here in Minnesota, but at nights you can feel the chill of autumn start to roll in.

Personally, autumn is my favorite season … the time of warm apple cider, boots, and fabulous layers. That’s why I thought it would be a great time to share something perfect for wrapping around yourself on a chill autumn evening, the capelet creations of Luci from DuhBe.

Luci joins us today to talk a little about the spark that started her upcycled Victorian creations, and the embroidery embellishments that go with them…

I just love that these are capelets, something you really don’t see much of these days. What inspired you to make these?

I had found this really pretty skirt, but it was too small for me. One day I threw the skirt over the shoulders of my dress form, and it occurred to me I could upcycle that skirt into a neo-victorian styled capelet.

I ended up putting that first one in my Etsy shop and it was featured in one of their emails which created demand for more capelets – so I made more! They are great for keeping the chill off your shoulders, and they are a good canvas for embroidery.

What made you choose the designs you did?

I love the Alice in Wonderland designs and for a while I was putting them on everything! So it just made sense to use those on the steampunk or neo-Victorian styled capelets I was making.

Did you make up the pattern yourself, or follow one?

My capelets are either upcyled skirts, or I make them from my own patterns similar to a-line or circle skirts. But I believe some of the big pattern companies have capelet patterns in their formal wear category as well.

How long does one of your creations take you? Any interesting challenges along the way?

It usually takes 2-4 hours depending on how many embellishments I add. The biggest challenge with converting a skirt to a capelet is getting the shoulders to lie flat. If you remove the waistband and add a dart at each shoulder, you can fix that. Then create a new neckline with bias tapes or ribbon, or just hem it and add pretty top stitching.

Tell us a bit about those awesome fabrics you chose…

Many of the fabrics I use are upcycled from thrifted garments. You can get expensive suiting fabrics really cheap that way!

I also love the linen look, and have used Osnaburg muslin for some of the capelets because it has a vintage look that goes well with embellishments and embroidery.

Any advice for people looking to tackle a similar project?

Capelets are very easy to make – just like skirts. If you add embroidery, my tip is to embroider on separate fabric and then add the design as a patch, along with other scraps of fabric for a cluster effect. You get a lot of design pop for very little money that way. Look for skirts with pretty details like a fancy hemline, so you get all that frouf-y stuff with no work on your part!

Thanks Luci for sharing these amazing creations and adding a little more inspiration to the upcycling trend. I know I’m now secretly wishing fall would hurry up and get here so I can warm my hands on a cup of cider and go thrifting for skirts!

Do you want to be a featured project on StitchPunk? Drop us a line at blog@urbanthreads.com or upload your Urban Threads stuff to our flickr group!

You’ve been asking, begging, bothering, inquiring and threatening (ok, not really) for them pretty much forever … and design packs are here!

You can now order coordinating collections of designs in convenient bundle form, at what has been scientifically determined to be an insanely good deal compared to the already sweet single design prices. Wonderland, tarot, steampunk, and lots more packs are now available, in machine embroidery and hand embroidery formats. All future series will also be released in pack form, so you’ll always have the opportunity to grab them all together at a better price.

Even better, for a short while, they’re all on sale for an even more insanely awesome price of 25% off!

P.S. – You’ll notice we’ve got some other shiny new changes on the site! There’s new navigation on the side bar, with a new “Design Packs” category you can click, and the product display page now has tabs to let you easily switch between hand and machine embroidery! Now you only get results for the product type you want.

Finally, there’s new printer-friendly PDF thread lists, and text files with color information that can be imported into Embird! We hope you like all the changes.

It was my very first year at this geektastic event, and it certainly didn’t disappoint. There were rooms where a dalek served you tea, a zombie den, a masquerade, steampunk galore and lots… I mean LOTS… of nerds.

Exhibit A

Yup, that’s me, dressed to the nines like the nerd I am in our fabulously stitchy Steampunk Coat. My hope was to show just how awesomely geek machine embroidery can be, or at the very least, introduce the geek world to the fact that it exists.

Truth be told, this is really the easiest way to explain what machine embroidery is. At parties when someone asks me what I do, I always struggle to find a clear answer. Saying I’m the Evil Genius of an online alternative machine embroidery company doesn’t usually get me many coherent responses, just usually a lot of blinks and then slow, backward steps. I might as well say I’m the inventor of LOLcats for all the good it does me.

(Though that would be the world’s coolest business card)

So, unless I have some cool stitchy stuff nearby to point to, I’m usually lost. I sometimes do have other stitchy stuff around to reference, but pointing to an embroidered tractor on a trucker hat doesn’t really get me any father into explaining what I do.

See That? That hat? That’s what I do, except absolutely nothing like that at all. Oh blast.

See? It doesn’t help. So, armed with my steampunk-y stitched coat, and a bunch of business cards tucked amongst the goggles on my top hat, I waded into the crowd to try my best. And what a crowd…

The costumes were fantastic. Nerds are so darn crafty, I just love them. You can’t tell in the photo really, but that Iron Man is homemade. Homemade! The crafty skills were endless.

And why pray tell are all my photos in black and white? Well, it could be that we went back in time to the steampunky age and they don’t have color back then.

They have rayguns, but they don’t have color photos. Right.

Or it could be that all I had on me was my iphone camera and they’re really better off this way. Could be that.

As it turns out, actually, nerds are even craftier than you think. SO crafty, that they’ve already heard of Urban Threads! I met these two fantastic ladies while wandering around looking at steampunk goods for sale. They recognized me! I feel so famous. Or it was the coat… either one.

Don’t they look fabulous? We chatted a little and I gave them a card. And then I got a peek of their fabulous stitchery too!

Check it! Urban Threads was representin’ without me even being there. I actually spotted a couple of Urban Threads designs here and there. This was definitely our kinda crowd.

Steampunk Alice in Wonderland. My kinda people.

Plenty of people indeed inquired about the coat and the embroidery. A lot of people assumed I must have bought it. Most had never really heard of machine embroidery, so it was fun to introduce them to it in such a steampunky way. I gave away all the business cards in my hat by the end of the night!

A few people said they had even seen to coat online already, either through Craftster or various blog sharing. It really was great fun to walk around in it and show the world a little of what we do, despite the fact that it was like a billion degrees in the coat. Sometimes, you have to suffer for your art.

Other than enlightening the world a little about the world of embroidery, I had a grand time at places like the house of toast (toast with any three toppings you want… from bacon to sprinkles) getting drinks in a steampunk airship, watching an evil presidential debate between Dr. Doom, the Master, and Mr. Burns, visiting the Willy Wonka Candy Land, running into Voldemort (almost literally), waltzing at the Steampunk Ball, and dancing with a Stormtrooper (who commented here yesterday… hi Mr. Stormtrooper!) Mr. T, and a Jedi.

What, you thought I was kidding abour Mr. T? He's a darn good waltzer.

I’m wondering if stitching up a costume could be a tradition for me every year, it was so much fun! Plus it’s a great exercise to pull out all the stops and see what I can do with our designs.

If so, do say hi to me next year. I’ll be the embroidery covered lass eating bacon-sprinkles-hummus toast in the corner, next to Batman.